Obama’s Persian Tutorial
By FOUAD AJAMI:
President Barack Obama did not “lose” Iran. This is not a Jimmy Carter moment. But the foreign-policy education of America’s 44th president has just begun. Hitherto, he had been cavalier about other lands, he had trusted in his own biography as a bridge to distant peoples, he had believed he could talk rogues and ideologues out of deeply held beliefs. His predecessor had drawn lines in the sand. He would look past them.
[...]
The Times inconsistency on kidnapping coverage
by Ed Morrissey, HOT AIR:
Over the weekend, I explained my decision to stay quiet about the kidnapping of the New York Times’ David Rohde when I first learned about it in March. The Times asked me to refrain from publishing it in order to keep from endangering Rohde, which I agreed could risk his life by giving the Taliban kidnappers exactly what they wanted — an audience. I’m happy with my decision, but Marc Danziger at Winds of Change points out that the Times themselves don’t stick to that policy when someone other than a NYT reporter gets abducted:
[...]
When America’s Enemies Experience Domestic Unrest
By Leslie S. Lebl, AT:
In 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a joke circulated in Warsaw: “What’s the difference between Afghanistan and Poland? Answer: Afghanistan begins with an “A” and Poland with a “P”. In other words, Poland might be Western and more prosperous but, in the end, it was just as vulnerable as Afghanistan to Soviet coercion.That joke, however, has resonance today. The summer of 1980 saw the birth of Solidarity, a unique worker’s movement within and against the “worker’s paradise” of the People’s Republic of Poland. The philosophical and psychological impact of a working class rebellion was tremendous; it was in fact fundamental to the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union.
[...]
Dodge Facts, Skip Details, Govern Chicago-Style
By Michael Barone, Examiner:
We pundits like to analyze our presidents and so, as Barack Obama deals with difficult problems ranging from health care legislation to upheaval in Iran, let me offer my Three Rules of Obama.
First, Obama likes to execute long-range strategies but suffers from cognitive dissonance when new facts render them inappropriate. His 2008 campaign was a largely flawless execution of a smart strategy, but he was flummoxed momentarily when the Russians invaded Georgia and when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. On domestic policy, he has been executing his long-range strategy of vastly expanding government, but may be encountering problems as voters show unease at huge increases in spending.
[...]
Iris Evans apologizes for nothing
Raphael Alexander, NP:
I have to admit that I’m a little surprised at the backlash over comments made by Alberta’s Finance Minister Iris Evans, and her subsequent apology. What’s even stranger is that a politician feels the need to apologize over something that is an entirely admirable belief.
[...]
TBK Comments policy
I have spent the morning clearing my comments box. Apparently some readers are intolerant of debate and prefer to question the character of those with opposing views. My policy is do not use swear words, do not cast aspersions on the character of those with views at variance with their own, do not use the Lord’s name in vain and don’t make stupid remarks about the consequences of having differing opinions. Otherwise I will shut down my comments.
‘Rights’ body wants to squash free-speech defences
Calgary Herald:
Believing perhaps that the best defence is a good offence, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has proposed the Canadian Criminal Code be stripped of the few common-law defences available to someone charged under its hate-crime provisions. In a paper advising Parliament –Freedom of Expression and Freedom from Hate in the Internet Age — the commission appears forgetful of the embarrassing headlines swirling around it and other human rights commissions during the last 18 months. Rather than present a suitable humility, it instead recommended the Code be rendered as oppressive as the commission itself!
[...]In these despotic forums, the vehicle of choice for those who wish to silence those whose opinions they don’t like, what is conventionally called a human rights complaint is less accusation, than old-style Soviet denunciation. Not surprisingly, with no right to plead truth or fair comment, and with no obligation upon the prosecution to prove intent or follow rules of evidence–circumstantial evidence and hearsay is accepted in human-rights cases — defendants hardly ever emerge victorious from these proceedings.
[...]
Stephen Meyer Ups the Ante With Signature in the Cell
Denyse O’Leary, Post Darwinist:
As we are ever quick to point out, the case for Darwinian evolution has been crumbling in recent years as scientific research points to design in nature. Now a unique, new argument for intelligent design is about to revolutionize the debate over evolution.
[...]
When GWB made a similar gaffe the media replayed it ad nauseum
Embedded video from CNN Video
h/t: Dissecting Leftism
Paternity
David Warren:
Three years ago, on father’s day, I called attention to the remarkable studies of Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young on the progress of “misandry” (the depreciation of males) in North America. The full titles of the two volumes already published — courageously, by McGill/ Queen’s University Press — are worth recalling:
1. Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture.
2. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men.
A third volume is still in the works, perhaps the most interesting because it will document the twisting of received religious notions into the radical feminist fantasia in which “the fall of man” becomes “the fall of men.” That title is provisionally:
3. Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man.
The books already published are a massive and devastating exposure of what we all experience from day to day as the key component of “political correctness.” They are a huge compendium of carefully documented, and often shocking facts. But such is the power of taboo, in contemporary intellectual life, that the books have gone nearly unreviewed in the media, and academic attention has been confined to ostracizing their authors.
Live or die
David Warren:
[...]
As I wrote Wednesday, I expect the regime to win, in a bloodbath. Guns trump warm bodies. But it may well be a close-run thing.
If the regime does win, it will emerge from the carnage as an even deadlier enemy to the West. The only leverage the West will have is appeasement, and that has never worked, anytime or anywhere in history.
President Obama bet, with his Cairo speech, that it will work this time. He disavowed his predecessor’s bellicose rhetoric, and committed the U.S. to dialogue with Iran’s monstrous rulers.
President Reagan, who extracted more concessions from Soviet tyrants than all previous presidents combined, did not do so by making nice to them.
Obama’s Extremism
By Miguel A. Guanipa, AT:
It’s not easy being a right winger these days; or as most liberals prefer to call us: extremists.No sooner you fancy you are a welcomed member of society’s rich and diverse cultural tapestry then someone goes and compares you to folk who stake out thematic museums for target practice.
Interestingly enough, liberals hardly ever draw similar parallels anymore between say, Islamist Jihadists and right wingers. It may be because the former have become part of an ever growing fellowship of protected people groups whose subversive activities do not hold a candle to the appalling kinds of extremism that right wingers, given the right circumstances, are allegedly prone to engage in.
[...]
Who Really Inspires Violence, the Right or Left?
By Selwyn Duke, AT:
Is the right responsible for inspiring murder, such as that of late-term abortionist George Tiller by Kansas native Scott Roeder? Some certainly seem to think so. For instance, the Friday before last Bill O’Reilly had as a guest on his show Joan Walsh, the editor of leftist news site Salon.com. She appeared because she had criticized O’Reilly for engaging in what she called a “jihad” against Tiller. Her thesis is that O’Reilly and, presumably, the rest of us who are passionately pro-life are culpable in Tiller’s death.Of course, this isn’t a novel idea among the left. If there is any kind of violent incident perpetrated by someone ostensibly a rightist, they blame their political opponents for stoking the fires of hatred. You can just count on it every time, be it an attack on an abortion center, a Timothy McVeigh, or . . . or . . . well, actually, there aren’t really all that many, are there? But don’t bother ideologues with the facts.
[...]
Voters are getting in the EU’s way
Telegraph:
Government for the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats. It is not a very appealing slogan, which may explain why it isn’t used by advocates of ever-closer union within the EU. But it appears increasingly to be the fundamental principle that animates the “European project”. The Eurocrats think politics is far too important for voters. Bureaucrats know best: only they should be allowed to decide the future of Europe.
[...]
ISRAEL BETRAYED
By JAMES KIRCHICK, NY Post:
Just six months into the new administration, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that those who harbored suspicions about Obama’s approach to the Middle East had good reason to be worried. A confluence of factors — including his administration’s undue pressure on Israel, a conciliatory approach to authoritarian Muslim regimes, and the baseless linkage of the failed “peace process” to the curtailment of the Iranian nuclear program — point to what could become “the greatest disagreement between the two countries in the history of their relationship,” as Middle East expert Robert Satloff recently told Newsweek.
This dramatic shift in American policy began several months ago when the administration signaled that it would make the cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank the centerpiece of its policy to revamp the region. And that approach, mostly hinted at through anonymous leaks, became as good as official when Obama delivered his vaunted address to the Muslim world in Cairo earlier this month. In that speech, Israel (and, specifically, its policy of settlement construction) was the only state to merit specific criticism from the president of the United States. Among all the degradations and injustices in the Middle East, from the abhorrent treatment of women in nations like Saudi Arabia, to Syrian-backed assassinations of pro-sovereignty politicians in Lebanon, to the arrest and imprisonment of gay men in Egypt, the leader of the free world singled out America’s one, reliable democratic ally in the region for rebuke.
[...]
Happiness is a Moral Obligation
Philippians 4:11-13 (New International Version)
11I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Israel still at risk
Calgary Herald:
Although the Iranian drama is presently captivating the world, attention will inevitably refocus on Israel. When it does, outside observers– many with anti-Israel agendas –will continue urging Israel to make concessions, give up land and talk to its foes without preconditions. The same pressure will be renewed through the Jewish state’s closest allies.
Bogging Israel down in fruitless discussions is exactly what the ayatollahs want. They have long backed Israel’s most proximate enemies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and would like few things better than seeing their mortal enemy entangled by diplomatic red tape. Never mind that there is no one to talk to since Hamas won’t renounced its goal of destroying Israel, while Fatah in the West Bank is corrupt and widely disliked by Palestinians.
Neutrality Isn’t an Option
By Mark Stein, NRO:
[...]
And so, when the analysts had finished combing the speech, they would have concluded that the meta-message of his “equidistance” was a prostration before “stability” — an acceptance of the region’s worst pathologies as a permanent feature of life.The mullahs stole this election on a grander scale than ever before primarily for reasons of internal security and regional strategy. But Obama’s speech told them that, in the “post-American world,” they could do so with impunity. Blaming his “agents” for the protests is merely a bonus: Offered the world’s biggest carrot, Khamenei took it and used it as a stick.
He won’t be the last to read Obama this way.
What I find so interesting is that I saw through this guy practically right away and I am a nobody with zero expertise or insight,
NYT Peddles the Obama Version of Mideast Peace Efforts
By Leo Rennert, AT:
New York Times diplomatic correspondent Helene Cooper is peddling a history-distorting canard that, in contrast to Obama’s early plunge into Mideast peacemaking, his two predecessors — Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — waited until the end of their terms to engage fully in efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Mr. Obama is taking on the contentious issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace early on in his administration, in contrast to his predecessors, former President George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who both pushed hardest for Israeli-Palestinian peace towards the end of their terms.
While this has become the orthodox view of Obama’s cheering section and W’s most vociferous critics, it just ain’t so.
[...]
Kyoto Schmyoto II
Randall Hoven, AT:
The US is doing better at controlling its carbon emissions than most other countries, without Kyoto mandates. Thus reports Drew Thornley at The American (the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute).
“According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), carbon-dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels increased 0.7 percent in the United States from 2000 to 2006, far below the worldwide increase of 21.6 percent. During the same period, emissions grew 4.9 percent in Europe, 37.6 percent in the Middle East, and 52.3 percent in Asia. Major developing nations saw big increases. India, Malaysia, and China’s emissions increased 27.7 percent, 45.8 percent, and 103 percent, respectively.”
So the world, or at least the American Enterprise Institute, is now catching up to the American Thinker, which in 2007 reported on this same phenomenon.
[...]
Europe’s great shift to the right
Macleans:
The colliding trends—the rise of the far right and the left’s vanishing act—underline a fundamental shift in European politics, says Grabbe. “In a way, it’s the legacy of 1989 [the collapse of the Soviet Bloc] catching up with the left,” she says. “They don’t have a narrative of how to get out of a crisis like this. They don’t have a clear ideology to offer.” And faced with a choice between the discredited theories of the socialist past, and the rapacious reality of the free-market present, the majority of voters seem to have thrown up their hands in disgust.Going forward, the biggest question is whether the anger and apathy will spill over to national elections. (Germany, Portugal and the U.K. will all go to the polls within a year.) Despite the fact that the European Parliament now has the power to amend or abolish two-thirds of the EU’s laws, voters in many countries continue to view it as a less important institution than their own legislatures. “It’s not treated very seriously,” says John Curtice, a professor of politics at Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde. “People use it as an opportunity to protest against the government or support smaller parties.”
[...]
Playing chicken with antibiotics
Macleans:
Disturbing data from the Public Health Agency of Canada reveals that antibiotics such as cephalosporin used in chicken hatcheries across the country is causing human resistance to the medicines, according to a startling report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal today.Surveillance information from the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance (CIPARS), which is funded by the public health agency, “strongly indicates that cephalosporin resistance in humans is moving in lockstep with use of the drug in poultry production,” the CMAJ explains.
[...]
This really irritates me because it puts the lives of those dependent on effective antibiotics at very high risk. I happen to be one of those people and it’s getting positively scary to watch year by year as antibiotic after antibiotic fails against more and more resistant bacteria. One of these days I, and many like me, will fall silent. Now you will know the reason why.
Media Critic: Fox Only Press Doing Its Job
NewsMax:
After President Barack Obama fired a shot at Fox News for always attacking his administration, Fox fired back, and now a respected television critic has joined in the crossfire – calling for other networks to also get tough with the administration’s policies, according to a report by stltoday.com.
[...]
End The Illegal Occupation of Jerusalem
By: Phyllis Chesler, Pajamas Media:
I recently met my friend, Helen Freedman, at the U Café. This café on the upper east side is my local watering hole, an oasis, a village well, where I meet people for coffee. Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I just sit there and read, as if I lived in Paris, Rome, Warsaw, Vienna, Tel Aviv, or on the lower east side of NYC–but long ago, when a writer had a favorite cafe where he (or she) read their newspapers, pen articles and books, meet other writers to argue, plan revolutions, initiate love affairs, and to dream.Freedman had just returned from one of her frequent trips to Israel. This time, what amazed her most were “all the illegal Arab settlements” which had grown exponentially “all over Jerusalem.”
Illegal Arab settlements?
[...]
Conservative bill could force you to hand over telecommunications
T.O Star::
Canada’s police and security forces would get greater access to the Internet and wireless telecommunications records of millions of Canadians under a bill tabled yesterday by the federal Conservatives.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan pitched the changes as key to “getting the bad guys” in the 21st century, but privacy advocates fear easier access poses an unwarranted intrusion into people’s Internet lives.
The “lawful access” bill creates a sliding scale of powers for police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Competition Bureau. At a basic level, investigators could, without judicial authorization, serve a “preservation demand” on a telecommunications company or Internet service provider (ISP) to put all data and communications of a client into a kind of “quick freeze.”
The company would have to retain the customer’s information, and not delete it. The police then would have 21 days to go to court and persuade a judge they have “reasonable grounds to suspect” criminal activity – a lower legal threshold than required for a wiretap warrant – and to order the company to hand over the information under a “production order.”
Or the police could seek a “preservation order” from the court to order data held for another 90 days.
The information could range from basic subscriber data like customer name, address, telephone number, and the Internet protocol address, email address, service provider identification and certain cellphone identifiers, or range up to the actual content of the communications, emails or text messages.
[...]
This is odious in the extreme – unless of course you are one of those idiots who says “If you don’t do anything wrong then you’ve got nothing to hide.” If you want a cop to access YOUR PRIVATE correspondence then take all your personal letters to your local police detachment and drop them off. There is a principle at stake here that has nothing to do with the 21st Century or modern technology. Did the introduction of the telephone suddenly remove the principle of privacy rights in the time of Alexander Graham Bell? Did bad guys back then use the new telephone technology to arrange crimes? Yes. Did the police get to access EVERYONES’ phone records? No. Why not? Because it would have violated the privacy rights of law abiding citizens which is precisely why WARRANTS were required in the first place. A judge had to be convinced there was sufficient evidence to warrant the violation of those same rights. Remember that in Canada good folks are hauled into kangaroo courts for expressing their opinion. It’s a crime here to hurt someone’s feelings. Imagine these same pc thought police accessing your private email. Without those safeguards Canada will take yet another step toward liberal fascism.
MORE
Free society needs free speech
By PETER WORTHINGTON:
In an op-ed article in the Globe and Mail, Jennifer Lynch, Chief Commissioner for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), says that “tolerance and open-mindedness … are the foundation of the Human Rights Act.”
She also cites other ideals, like equality, curbing hate, freedom of expression, fairness, natural justice, efficiency and so on. But “tolerance and open-mindness” are the central ideals to which the Human Rights Act and Canadians aspire.
Lynch then says she believes critics of human rights commissions and tribunals (Mark Steyn? Ezra Levant? Lorne Gunter? The Toronto Sun?) “are manipulating information and activities around rights cases and freedom of expression to further a new agenda.”
Goodness! Where is Lynch’s “tolerance and open-mindedness” here? It seems to evaporate when it comes to issues about which she has strong (perhaps dogmatic?) feelings.
[...]
The Firing Of A White House Watchdog
By K. Daniel Glover, AIM:
The Washington Post has decided that it doesn’t need a White House watchdog — or at least it doesn’t need liberal blogger Dan Froomkin to serve as the watchdog of a liberal White House.
Politico broke the news yesterday that the Post will not renew Froomkin’s contract to write the column/blog hybrid “White House Watch” he has been writing since 2004, and the newspaper’s ombudsman confirmed the rumor. Bloggers on the left are upset by the news, and even conservative blogger Ed Morrissey of Hot Air finds it a bit curious.
Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt said Froomkin’s liberal bent “was not a factor in our decision,” but he also said, “With the end of the Bush administration, interest in the blog also diminished.” Those two points may conflict. If interest in Froomkin’s blog diminished, a point that is being disputed, it’s entirely likely that his political orientation was to blame.
[...]
Hope and Change — but Not for Iran
By Charles Krauthammer:
Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued “dialogue” with their clerical masters.
[...]
Explaining Obama: Our First Islamist President?
By Richard Baehr, AT:
One might think that Barack Obama’s obsession with Jewish settlements in the West Bank would wane a bit, given the events in Iran. But to think this would be wrong.
The President has applauded the vigorous election debate in Iran (the one between protestors and those who arrest and shoot them?), and ridiculed the cause of the protestors by arguing that Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are really not too far apart in their views. If that is the case, the Administration is in a sense arguing that the protestors need not be on the street, since if the choice were tweedledee and tweedledum, who cares whom the ruling mullahs select as the winner?
[...]
DDT, the banned lifesaver
By Diane Katz, FP:
Death from malaria means convulsions and delirium, retching and diarrhea, joint and abdominal pain so excruciating that coma can be a blessing. The parasitic infection destroys the body’s red blood cells and clogs its capillaries, depriving vital organs and the brain of blood. That malaria strikes some 300 million people annually — and kills an African child every 30 seconds — is all the more tragic given how preventable it is. But modern environmental ideology simply doesn’t permit the use of DDT, the most effective means of eradicating the ghastly disease.
[...]
Insider: ACORN ‘always been Democrat operation’
By Chelsea Schilling, WND:
While the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, remains under investigation for voter registration fraud and related allegations in at least 14 states, one former insider told WND the organization acted as unofficial arm of the Democratic Party during the recent election and used cash operations to keep some financial transactions under wraps.
[...]
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